


if we make it or we don't, we won't be alone

by calcliffbas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Male Friendship, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26478718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcliffbas/pseuds/calcliffbas
Summary: The war has stopped, but the world keeps turning. Hakoda and Bato are on their way home.
Relationships: Bato & Hakoda (Avatar)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	if we make it or we don't, we won't be alone

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vance Joy, 'We're Going Home'.

“Colder than I remember.”

From the little Hakoda could see of Bato’s face, Bato wasn’t best pleased by this turn of meteorological events.

“Maybe you’ve just gotten soft?” He offered. The chill was unfamiliar after so long north, but something about it felt _right_.

Bato snorted, but the sound was muffled by the cloth over his mouth. “Because the going these past three years has been so _smooth_. Real life of luxury.”

“You’ve forgotten what hard work really means, Bato, that’s your problem.”

“If hard work’s my problem, hard work looks a lot like you.”

Hakoda snorted as he leaned over the side of the railings. “Not your finest work.”

“Still better than your best.”

He scoffed lightly. “Don’t make me throw you overboard.”

“ _Any_ distance we can put between me and your idiocy would be an improvement.”

Hakoda let Bato have the last word – a Chief knew when to speak, and when to listen. Water was push and pull, give and take. It yielded at the right moment, and took the path of least resistance.

Katara (Master Katara? His little girl?) seemed to be speaking a different language these days – jabbering on about Fire Nation villages and Air Temples and spirits only knew what else – but when she talked about the water, the moon and the tides, Hakoda understood _that_ much. You couldn’t live on ice at the bottom of the world without picking up at least a _little_ understanding of how water flowed.

They stood there for a little while, Hakoda and Bato, in the sort of silence that built up over years. That time Bato had snuck in and stolen Hakoda’s five-flavor soup when Hakoda had been out on watch. It wasn’t _real_ watch duty, technically - he hadn't even had a spear, just a knife and his wits - but his father had told him he had a duty to his Tribe. As long as polar bear dogs roamed free, there was no way he was going to let them roam into the village.

(Except for Bato, a hungry Hakoda had later vowed. If polar bear dogs found their way into Bato’s tent, he would have to hope they would be appeased by five-flavor soup, because there was no way Hakoda was going to save him after a betrayal of this magnitude.)

When they had gone ice dodging, and earned their marks. Hakoda had led wisely, but if Bato had not trusted his leadership, and if he had not trusted Bato in turn, they would have failed.

_Not much has changed, all these years later._

The time Bato had encouraged Hakoda had thrown a snowball in Kya’s direction to show her his strength. It had hit her in the head and she had _not_ been impressed. He had learnt his lesson, and tried to teach Sokka in turn.

_Brains over brawn, son. Brains over brawn._

“You think the kids will be okay?”

Would he have left if he hadn’t thought that? “They’re at the palace, Bato. They’ll be fine.”

Bato made a noise that, if Hakoda interpreted it correctly, indicated his vague disapproval. It was hard to make it out through the muffling cloth. “Don’t remind me. It still gets me nervous.”

Hakoda supposed Bato had a point. If you’d told him a few months ago that Sokka and Katara would have been _honored guests of the Fire Lord_ in the Royal Palace, he would have swum the breadth of La’s seas to get them back. And no lightning, flame or steel would have stopped him.

“Zuko helped Sokka break me out,” he reminded his brother. “And he saved Katara. He’s a good kid. They’ll be fine.”

“I still can’t believe that, by the way.”

Hakoda cracked a grin at that. “Yeah, I thought Sokka was a few spices short of five flavors when he told me, too. I was hearing things.”

“Taken one too many blows to the head in prison transit, huh?”

“And yet, my tactical mind _still_ outshines yours, Bato.”

Bato slapped him in the arm, and they sniggered together, like they were fourteen again with ash on their brows and the southern lights in their hearts and the waves at their backs to carry them home.

“I just,” Bato shook his head. “The one time I heard about him was at the invasion. Sokka said the Prince had ambushed them just after I’d left them to meet up with you.”

“Prince Ponytail, huh?”

Bato’s shoulders shook and his eyes gleamed. “He drew a picture in the sand. Looked like an angry badgermole.”

“My son’s an excellent artist.”

“It looked about as good as one of your practice betrothal necklaces.”

“Talent clearly runs in the family.”

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far…”

“You said it was ‘about as good’!” Hakoda laughed.

Bato gestured out to the ocean. “All that sea, and I still can’t see how you got a compliment out of that.”

Hakoda groaned. “Spirits, maybe I _will_ throw you overboard.”

“Figures. You make it through a war, but you insult Hakoda’s carving skills? That’s it.”

That made Hakoda chuckle, at least for a moment. Then, the smile slid from his face, and he leaned a little further over the railing.

“She said it looked worse than when I tried sewing.”

Bato shifted a little like he was about to put his hand on his shoulder. It had been how they showed their support for three years.

But holding your brother up in the middle of a war was very different to holding him up when all the ice wine in the world didn’t bring her _back_.

“And then you spent another two months carving another stone,” he settled on instead. “And she said yes.”

“Because I tried.”

“Because you _cared_.”

“Wanted it to be good for her.”

“She was always honest with you.”

Hakoda managed a weak smile. “Sometimes a little _too_ honest.”

“Don’t lie,” Bato said. It must have been the cloth that made his voice sound a little rougher. “You loved it.”

“Yeah.”

“She loved you.”

“Yeah.”

_But love doesn’t end, she loves me still, we’re going home and she’ll be there when we get there, she loves me I love her I love her I love her –_

They had set sail from the Caldera two weeks ago. They’d run out of fireflakes to put on the seal jerky after nine days. They still had another week before they were due to arrive at the South Pole.

 _Home_.

Was it home if you’d spent so long in the Earth Kingdom seas that you’d forgotten the weight of your parka on your shoulders?

Hakoda hadn’t tasted his mother’s cooking in three years. Ummi would have started on solid foods by now. Had Atiqtalaaq gotten over his lisp? Was Sokka’s watchtower still standing?

 _Doubtful_.

“When I tried –” he cleared his throat. “When I tried to sew up my shirt without telling her, she was so mad. She stabbed me with the needle when she caught me.”

Bato huffed. “I remember you tried to stem it with my parka.”

“You’d just washed it,” Hakoda replied without any shame.

“ _Exactly_.”

“It was more hygienic than mine. Cleaner.”

“Not for long, it wasn’t. I think she yelled at you for that, too.”

They shared a small grin. Well, Hakoda grinned. Bato’s eyes narrowed at the corners. He might have been smiling back or plotting his impending demise. But Hakoda was _fairly_ sure Bato had forgiven him by now. Right?

“But then she sat me down and taught me how to fix up the rip in the sleeve.”

“Kya was always a good teacher.”

Bato’s voice wasn’t soft and quiet and understanding. It had been, once. But even if grief didn’t end, a Chief couldn’t afford to stay in his home forever. The Tribe came first. They both knew this.

_Kya had been his home, once._

“I didn’t know what I was doing, after,” he confessed. He’d been confessing variants on this theme to Bato for most of his life.

_I don’t feel very wise. I don’t know if she likes me. I don’t know how to be a father. How do I tell them she’s –? What do I do now?_

Bato was a man of action. You had to be, in the Tribe. Like the tiger shark. If you stopped moving, your blood would freeze. But the Tribe was community, and love. You picked your brother up when he fell down. When he couldn’t move, you helped him keep going.

Sometimes, Hakoda felt like all he did was fall, and all Bato did was catch him.

In war, you had to freeze your love, or it would burn you up when your brothers fell in battle.

In a new era of love and peace? Hakoda didn’t know _what_ to do.

“You, uh.” Bato scratched at what approximated his chin. “Might want to remember those words.”

“Hm?”

“Just saying. You’ll probably be thinking them a lot, now.”

“You want to run it by me slowly?” Hakoda asked, raising an eyebrow.

Bato shrugged. “I’m just saying. It’s after, now. War’s over.”

Hakoda considered this for a moment. “None of us know what we’re doing, after.”

“Not sure we knew what we were doing before, either.”

“Or during.”

“Or during,” Bato agreed. “But we figured it out.”

Hakoda had trusted Bato when he was a pup of fourteen, and he had trusted him when he was a shell of a man at five-and-thirty, and now he was two-and-forty and the world at war was now the world at peace, everything had changed but he trusted Bato still.

“Yeah,” he decided eventually. “Guess we did.”

They were going home, and they would figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell I suck at writing endings?


End file.
